The removal of app managing ignores some HUGE things that apple and even many user defending decision have seriously overlooked.
I love apple devices, and own many of them. 3 iphones, 1 ipad. many macs. I also live in a rural area where internet speeds as slow as 1.5Mbit DOWNLOAD is till a very real problem. In fact recent data from speedtest.net and other sources have indicated there is still a large percentage of USA (rural areas) who doesn't even have access to 10Mbit or faster internet. I'm sure this is true in other countries as well.
So what's this mean for app management? I have always downloaded updates on mac via itunes ONCE then synced them to 4 different devices manually. Garage band update alone can run1-2Gig download. There can also be up to 10-15 app updates PER DAY that can easily run over a gig too. You may think this small but imagine if updating your apps means letting itunes download said updates OVER NIGHT while you sleep because that's how long it takes. PER DAY sometimes.
You know what that download is now? 4x that with 4 device. No way to download on a single source then sync to all devices is a HUGE impact. Just because you are on a wifi connection doesn't mean you don't have slow speeds, or data caps like many ISPs still have. This removal from itunes is a big way to really screw over a lot of users and maybe even turn users away from apple products who NEED a way to manage multiple devices for multiple users via a single location like itunes.
Apples whole "wireless is future" ignores the fact that many people cannot embrace that future yet. I never over air update even on wifi because of slow internet. I even disable any and all automatic syncing features too like photos, back to mac, icloud, etc etc because again bandwidth issues. I literally RELY on itunes as the one source to backup, sync, update all devices on the regular.
So what does this mean to for me? no iOS 11, no future apple devices, just so I can stay on an older version of itunes that isn't broken, because yes, 12.7 is broken for a lot of users and I hope apple hears our voice on this and fixes this mistake. I they don't want it in itunes anymore than they need to release a separate app for it.